Welding solutions manufacturer Welding Industries Australia (WIA) has chosen Sana Commerce to launch a new integrated eCommerce website and customer portal.
Sana Commerce says the project aims to bolster WIA’s existing online presence by creating a single website that provides access to everything from product details and pricing to order, billing, and after-sales support.
WIA IT manager Tim Melbourne says the company has worked with a customer portal and a separate website, with Expression Engine as the back end.
“We could see that there would be significant efficiencies for our customers if the two resources became one,” he says.
WIA had also decided to upgrade its existing Dynamics Navision ERP platform and acquire Dynamics365 Business Central.
“Initially, we looked at the potential of building a custom website that would pull details from multiple ERP data warehouses and provide them to customers,” says Melbourne.
“However, it soon became apparent that this would be a very complicated exercise requiring a lot of ongoing maintenance and could run the risk of providing incorrect product details to customers.”
After market research, WIA decided to use Sana Commerce Cloud in early May 2022.
Melbourne says the WIA could see that Sana could provide the capabilities needed to combine the website and portal into one platform.
“We could also see that it could easily deliver a turnkey website and also had a tight integration with Business Central,” he says.
“It was clear that Sana Commerce would give us the ability to provide the look-and-feel of a customer portal within the website itself while at the same time leveraging key business logic in real-time from the ERP, which was very attractive.”
Melbourne says the primary goal of the new website and portal is to improve customer satisfaction. He says that with the new site, customers can easily access all the product information they seek, create quotes, track orders and manage their accounts.
“This, in turn, will free up our customer service team to focus on other value-add activities and find additional ways to improve the customer service experience,” he says.
In addition to new equipment orders, the new integrated site has the potential to eventually allow customers to order spare parts and make warranty claims. It also allows users to initiate credit applications online.
Marcus McNamara, head of APAC at Sana Commerce, says that when it comes to a successful online offering, providing accurate data to customers is critical.
“The new e-commerce platform enables WIA to leverage accurate, real-time data, including customer agreements, inventory availability, pricing, and promotions,” he says.
“Full integration with their Business Central ERP allows them to provide buyers with a single source of information. In other words, they can display data and logic in their ERP directly on their Sana website, without the threat of duplication, interruption, delays, or manual synchronization.”
McNamara says delivering information accuracy, and reliability will help strengthen WIA’s relationships with its customers and help improve the accuracy of cross-selling and upselling opportunities.